The Handbook of Work Analysis

Methods, Systems, Applications and Science of Work Measurement in Organizations

Mark Alan Wilson, Winston Bennett, Jr., Shanan Gwaltney Gibson, George Michael Alliger, Mark Alan Wilson, Winston Bennett, Jr., Shanan Gwaltney Gibson, George Michael Alliger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136486838
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Culture sur le lieu de travail

This new handbook, with contributions from experts around the world, is the most comprehensive treatise on work design and job analysis practice and research in over 20 years. The handbook, dedicated to Sidney Gael, is the next generation of Gael's successful Job Analysis Handbook for Business, Industry and Government, published by Wiley in 1988. It consists of four parts: Methods, Systems, Applications and Research/Innovations. Finally, a tightly integrated, user-friendly handbook, of interest to students, practitioners and researchers in the field of Industrial Organizational Psychology and Human Resource Management.

Sample Chapter available:

Chapter 24, Training Needs Assessment by Eric A. Surface is available for download.

Part III

Work Analysis Applications

GEORGE M. ALLIGER

The Group for Organizational Effectiveness

GREGORY M. HURTZ

California State University, Sacramento

For many reasons that corresponded to other similar developments at that time, around the turn of the 20th century there was an increasing desire to be able to describe work in an objective or “scientific” way. Industrial-organizational psychologists often want to describe jobs separately from the particular characteristics and uniqueness of any one job holder. For this reason, job analysis involves obtaining the views, opinions, and attitudes from many job holders of a given job, for any one job incumbent’s views will be idiosyncratic. Job analysis is thus largely inductive in nature. It draws general conclusions by building up a picture of a job from a myriad of observations by or about job incumbents.

This process of distilling the objective from the subjective can be so much fun—although some might argue that the words fun and work analysis should not be used in close proximity. However, consider the process. First, the work analyst listens to and questions job holders about their work. The work analysts hears the job holders’ perspectives on what they have to do, how they work their equipment, and how they interact with colleagues, customers, and managers—in short, how they accomplish their work in the midst of every challenge and difficulty. Then, the work analyst reduces and collates the resultant data into a useful form. In my experience, that process has been fun. Often, it has felt like a privilege to see how seriously people think and how deeply they feel about their work. Hopefully this has been—or will be—your experience too.

Once a work analysis is completed, its outcomes (i.e., description of the job and/or description of required worker characteristics) almost invariably serve as input for one or more other interesting processes: a selection test, work redesign, job simulation, and so forth. Part III powerfully illustrates this fundamental role of work analysis; it underpins a large portion of what work psychologists do.

Each chapter in Part III presents a clear exposition of how the outcomes of work analysis can be successfully applied to various organizational needs and requirements. The chapters are intentionally short and to the point. Tables, figures, and step-by-step processes are used to provide easy-to- assimilate content. Practitioners should find these chapters helpful and practical. However, each chapter also reflects state-of-the-art scholarship and can be profitably read by students and professors as well.

In Chapter 18, Amy M. DuVernet tackles the important process of altering the requirements for a job or jobs to address any of a number of organizational needs. Naturally, you have to understand a job in order to think about redesigning it, so job analysis is a critical step. Like the other authors in Part III, DuVernet places work analysis within a clearly delineated process relevant to her topic, from identifying objectives to evaluation.

As DuVernet clearly points out, job redesign raises any number of interesting questions for the practitioner. Should a work analysis be done only on the focal job or also on others on that the focal job impinges (e.g., other jobs that affect and are affected by the focal job through input/output, communication, or control dependencies)? At what level (e.g., task, task cluster, duty) should the work analysis be completed? Should a questionnaire be used or should the job analysis be more “blank slate”? Should the (fascinating) construct of Growth Need Strength (Hackman & Lawler, 1971) be assessed prior to any job redesign to examine the likelihood that the redesign will have its desired effects? When reading this chapter, you will begin to appreciate both the promise and the challenge of job design and redesign as well as the central role of job analysis.

Chapter 19 by Gregory M. Hurtz (my invaluable associate editor for Part III) and Chris W. Wright covers one of the most immediate and important outcomes from a job analysis. Work descriptions indeed are the most public face of work analysis. They are the first impression of job seekers everywhere regarding a potential job, helping them make what may be one of the most important decisions of their lives.

Hurtz and Wright first provide a very useful definition of a job description, which includes the work, the tools, the environment, and characteristics of the worker. However, they augment this core definition, or first layer, with other layers: databasing of descriptions and their electronic dissemination, user interactivity, and multimedia. The implications of these layers are carefully elaborated by the authors within the context of Barber’s (1998) model of employee recruitment (attracting applicants, maintaining their interest, and persuading them to accept an offer). Clearly, this is a new era of technology-enabled recruitment, so Hurtz and Wright review some of the questions raised by technology, as well as the obvious benefits.

In Chapter 20, Dan A. Biddle and James E. Kuthy discuss how work analysis supports the development of legally defensible work initiatives. In particular, they review legal developments in the United States, including and following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and how the work analyst should understand and can respond to these developments when making decisions in hiring, training, identifying essential functions, and so forth.

Biddle and Kuthy offer a clearly delineated process, or template, for carrying out a job analysis that will easily support validation efforts and adhere to guidance such as the Uniform Guidelines (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC], 1978). Even if the job analysis approach you are adopting is different from the one advocated in this chapter, a careful study of the steps in the presented process can provide real guidance to the practitioner.

Dennis Doverspike and Winfred Arthur, Jr. address work analysis and tests in Chapter 21. The authors address both how work analysis can help you choose an appropriate off-the-shelf test, as well as how it can be the basis for constructing a custom test. The reader should note the careful emphasis on relating latent constructs to measures, which is the most fundamental principle for test development—and one with which, if you hold to it, you cannot go far wrong. Together with Biddle and Kuther’s previous chapter on EEOC compliance, you are provided with a solid basis for understanding why and how to create valid, reliable measures that will meet the objectives you have for them (e.g., selection) and stand up to close scrutiny (even when that scrutiny is unfriendly, as in the case of litigation).

Doverspike and Arthur provide a chapter that is a model of clarity and utility, with its step-by- step processes, checklists, and illustrative figures. Their chapter is very thorough and should be extremely useful to the practitioner. Wondering about how to link tasks to knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs)? How many test items to write in order to have a sufficient number once the poorer items are culled? How to differentially weight test items? You will find the answers in Chapter 21.

Chapter 22 on work simulations was written by Deborah L. Whetzel, Michael A. McDaniel, and Jeffrey M. Pollack. Simulations have both similarities and some striking differences to a standard test of knowledge. One critical benefit of simulations is positive applications reactions to them; face validity can be very important (Shotland, Alliger, & Sales, 1998). As the authors are careful to point out, when developing a simulation, you will still need to ensure the traditional aspects of reliability and validity.

Whetzel et al. describe how to build both high- and low-fidelity simulations. In high-fidelity simulations, the applicants actually complete a task; in the lower fidelity simulations, they describe how they would respond in various situations. It is useful to be reminded that low-fidelity simulations are an option and that building a simulation need not be a budget-busting affair. Regardless, with the advent of greater virtual reality technologies, there are great opportunities for new, imaginative work simulations. However, the need for basic, solid development practices will not disappear, and this chapter should benefit anyone considering the development of a work simulation.

In Chapter 23, Sylvia G. Roch and Kevin J. Williams address the important and thorny topic of building effective performance appraisals from a work analysis. They first consider the state of performance appraisal (malaise and dissatisfaction), but cogently argue that it can and should perform a useful role within an organization. For this to happen, however, performance appraisal needs to be part of an overall performance management system, which itself is part of an integrated human resources system that also includes training, compensation, talent management, and so forth. All of this taken together supports employee competence and motivation.

Of course, central to a good performance evaluation system is its design, and here work analysis is foundational. One job analysis method favored by Roch and Williams is the critical incidents method (Flanagan, 1954), which should provide some awareness of a fundamental continuity and even stability in work psychology to go along with all the change and new developments. It is from work analysis that job performance dimensions as well as measurable behaviors are obtained. These measureable behaviors are, it seems, the sine qua non of any performance appraisal. Without them, it would neither valid nor accepted by managers or employees. However, Roch and Williams stress that one has to build carefully on the work analysis foundation, not only in instrument development, but in training and communications.

No handbook section on work analysis applications would be complete without a chapter on training needs analysis. In Chapter 24, Eric A. Surface addresses this topic. Identification of work tasks and/or KSAOs within the context of a training needs analysis is very common, so once again the fundamental nature of work analysis is revealed. Surface thus provides a complete and grounded view of training needs analysis. The reader may be surprised to see all the needed parts and pieces of a training needs analysis, as well as how all of these parts fit together.

Surface is careful to place training needs analysis within the larger organizational context. The chapter conveys clearly to the reader the need for good problem diagnosis throughout the training needs analysis process. It may be that the so-called training need is not a need at all. The chapter has several tables that will guide the practitioner in carrying out this diagnosis—and indeed the entire training needs analysis process.

If job analysis is defined as a broad body of techniques that developed to describe jobs objectively (i.e., independent of any job holder), then what is termed job evaluation is a kind of job analysis as well as an application of it. In Chapter 25, Robert J. Harvey covers the role of work analysis in determining pay via job evaluation. To many, the compensation differences among jobs can seem arbitrary. Arbitrariness is exactly what should be avoided. Unless one is arguing for a complete flattening of the compensation landscape so that everyone earns the same, then you need a method to evaluate the contributions of jobs to an organization and society.

Harvey examines job evaluation methods, reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of each; you will find here a lucid exposition, for example, of whole-job and compensable factor methods. Harvey persuasively argues for the approach he calls the Policy Capturing Point Factor method as a way to minimize subjectivity. The last section of the chapter is an intriguing and useful illustration of this method, using a large sample of over 200 occupations.

Chapter 26 about career planning was written by Stephen G. Atkins. Like work design in Chapter 18, career planning entails that useful idea of worker-occupation or worker-job fit. If a worker has preferences for certain aspects of work and they are absent from his or her job, the worker likely will be dissatisfied with that job. Conversely, if there is a match between preferences and job characteristics, satisfaction is much more likely. Therefore, methods are needed to assess worker preferences, jobs, and the degree of match between them.

Atkins provides an example study that measures job fit, then analyzes and interprets the results. Be prepared to think about the squared Euclidean distance metric versus that of Minkowski when assessing fit—but do not be scared off by either. Throughout, Atkins provides useful clear advice and guidance to those interested in career planning, including readers with the unique job of career development managers.

In Chapter 27, Brice M. Stone and Rosalinda Vasquez Maury describe the development of the Training Impact Decision Support System (TIDES) for the U.S. Air Force. The goal of TIDES is to manage the training careers of Air Force personnel; among other things, it allows the estimation of the dollar benefits of various training program decisions over entire careers. As you can imagine, building a modeling system as capable as TIDES requires detailed information on jobs. Stone and Vasquez Maury describe how those data are collected and used. They provide several examples of the system, including how TIDES results can help career managers understand the impact of decisions on consolidating training or otherwise restructuring career fields.

Chapter 28, which focuses on a web-based approach to job analysis, was written by Darrel L. Sandall, John Henderson, Roni Reiter-Palmon, Michael Brown, and Scott R. Homan. The authors argue forcefully that job analysis needs to take advantage of newer technology to become more time efficient, cost effective, and easily updatable. Specifically, they present a sophisticated approach that uses a web-based system to data collection from subject matter experts (SMEs), using both SME identification of work-re...